


gold dust

by beanbun (ramenree)



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Drinking, Fluff and Angst, Guardian Angel, Hospitals, M/M, Snippets, Tenderness, Terminal Illnesses, ramenreesnippet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27623899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramenree/pseuds/beanbun
Summary: Rich heir and businessman Lin Yanjun isn't happy when he dies of a car crash, so he pleads with God to give him another chance at life.God agrees, with the condition that he first serve as a guardian angel to You Zhangjing, a boy dying of cancer, with a temper unlike anything else yet a heart of pure gold.
Relationships: Lin Yanjun/You Zhangjing
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	gold dust

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, ramenree here. This pseud (beanbun), will be used to post shorter drabbles and snippets of fics that I probably won't get to for a very long time but that I write anyways to help me relieve stress. I'll be posting here fairly frequently, so stay tuned if you ever want to read quick drabbles of ipd and npc boys!
> 
> This is a snippet of a work-in-progress described by the summary of this fic. I am posting it because I might not be able to get to it in a while, and I might just keep the drabble as a drabble. 
> 
> main: [ramenree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramenree/pseuds/ramenree)  
> 

Yanjun made sure to take the stairs this time around, because even though he loathed the seven flights of stairs he had to move up, he wasn’t sure if he could foresee whether or not the elevators would be generally empty this time around. It was three am, yes, but as he had learned over the past few months now, you could never be sure just when something would happen in the middle of the night.

At the top of the stairs, his legs still aching a bit from climbing so much, he paused. He reached into his jacket and readjusted the bottle of whiskey tucked carefully under his armpit. It was a bit cheap, maybe, but it was the best that the liquor store downtown offered, and to be completely fair, the quality of the drink itself wouldn’t matter in the mouth of a boy who had never tasted it before.

Once, Yanjun had gone out to an auction and bought every bottle of expensive, prized, antique liquor there was to offer that day. Then, after tasting each, he dumped every bottle into the lake to the delight of his friends and girlfriends watching him. 

He wished that he hadn’t done that now.

A rustling sound greeted him as he pushed the door open to his room. Yanjun hung his jacket on the hook on the wall, and put on his most winning smile before turning and brandishing the bottle again. Zhangjing, as per their agreement, hadn’t slept yet, but he might have been, with how he was laying on the bed in an almost fetal position, his arms and legs tucked into him, but his eyes wide open and bright, teetering on the edge of a smile.

Zhangjing was so weak now that he couldn’t push himself up to take the glass that Yanjun handed to him, so Yanjun quietly propped the bed up and tucked Zhangjing into a sitting position, and made sure that his fingers were tightly wrapped around the wineglass before letting go.

“You don’t drink whiskey out of wine glasses,” he chided gently, sitting himself on the edge of the bed and eyeing his own glass.

Zhangjing shrugged the best he could. The odd patches of his brown hair were tousled and messed up, hiding the ugly scar that the doctors had etched into him just a few weeks earlier, but overall, Yanjunt thought it was a good look on him. “I’ve never drank before, period. Let me try a wine glass if you’re going to sneak some alcohol into me.”

“It wasn’t  _ me _ sneaking it into you,” he protested. “ _ You _ asked me.”

“You said yes, and I’m apparently too sick in the head now to make my own decisions.” Zhangjing held his glass up a bit so that he could see the gold colour under the dim moonlight. “Even if it’s one of my dying wishes.”

They clinked glasses.

They didn’t say much as they drank it. Just as Yanjun had guessed, it wasn’t at all bad, but it wasn’t by any means good either. But he drank it in silence, and when Zhangjing reached for the bottle and raised his eyebrows at him, he nevertheless poured himself and the other boy another half-glassful. 

One glass, and another. And another after that.

Towards the end of the night, when the horizon began to break out in lovely shades of pink and yellow and orange, and when Yanjun was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol now inside his stomach, burning through his veins and into his chest and throat, Zhangjing turned to him. His face was red, and his eyes were bleary, the marks of the truth that he had simply never tasted or stomached anything like what he had just indulged in before. But they were still bright; Zhangjing’s eyes were always bright.

“Lin Yanjun,” he started, then trailed off. His fingers were shaking around the glass, so Yanjun reached to take it away from him, but he jerked it away and kept on shaking all the same. “Yanjun, I…”

He trailed off again, blinking dumbly at him. Now his entire body was shaking a bit, though very slightly, waving like a leaf in the still, early morning air. 

Yanjun swallowed. Reached anyways and took the glass away from him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said softly down at him, at the dying man now resting on the pillows. “I’m so sorry.”

Zhangjing blinked again, closed them. Didn’t open them again. “Don’t be. I… I…” An awful shudder seemed to pass through him. 

Yanjun blinked hard, then pressed the button that would return the bed into a flat stance. “Don’t. Get some sleep, Zhangjing. Sleep it off.” He laid a careful hand on the thick blankets.

Zhangjing turned slightly and buried his face back into the sheets. 

“Thank you,” he murmured into them. His voice was slightly slurred. “Yanjun I…” 

He didn’t try to say anything again before he was fast asleep.

Yanjun swallowed and pressed his lips together. His own hands were shaking now, trembling harder and with more fear than he thought he had ever seen on the boy himself. Carefully, he bent and smoothed the covers over him, allowing himself to linger on the expanse of the boy’s neck, pressing gently into the pulse that still thrummed under his fingertips. His eyes were hot.

He left after that.

Zhangjing died four hours later.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Leave a comment or kudos if you like; they really motivate me. Also, leave a comment as to whether you think this fic is worth continuing! I have a lot of wips, so it's nice to know which I should focus on the most <3
> 
> [ramenree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramenree/pseuds/ramenree)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ramenreee) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/ramenree)  
> 


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